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Battlezone Fronteris: Nachmund review (fully painted)


The Battlezone Fronteris: Nachmund box spoke to me. "I could be a forward operating base for your space marines," it said. A credit card fuge immediately followed.

Look, I know space marine FOBs are supposed to be brightly coloured lego bricks that fall from the sky, but this felt like a good fit for basic, prefab structures that (a) have narratively useful self-contained objectives and (b) could also fit other contexts, making it more multi-use. Which, given the price of GW terrain, is kind of a must.

If you're wondering about whether you, too, would like this terrain in your life, this post will endeavour to offer some useful information.

Painting
I'm not going to go over how I painted these here, since I've written that up for Goonhammer (it's not up as I write this, as it's waiting for the other two authors to do their bits). The TLDR is that I primed them in a dark brown (TT Combat's Laser Cut Brown), then zenithal sprayed them a light grey (Citadel's Grey Seer). After that, some quick detailing and sponge chipping, then finally some time-consuming work with thinned Army Painter Dirt Spatter to make it look more lived-in.

Top: with dirt spatter. Bottom: without.

Scale - how does Fronteris stuff scale with normal humans and bigger minis like Astartes?
It's well-judged. The firing ports in the stockade walls, and the windows of the habitation buildings, are just about low enough that most Cadian plastic minis' guns can be fired through them, and tall enough that intercessors can aim and fire their bolt rifles too.



Arguably the one issue with scale comes with the 'landing pad.' The steps have been designed so that you can slide a model's base through them, allowing you to have minis partway up the stairs (useful) but at the cost of the stairs looking somewhat out of scale. I imagine this will bother the crap out of some people, and leave others shrugging indifferently. Overall I like the functionality.

The only other scale issue is that the landing pad is waaaay too small for most aircraft GW sell. Maybe an arvus lighter could manage it, but not much else. I'm actually thinking of it as a silo. Could be a fuel dump, a missile silo, or a supply depot. Way more flexible, and offers a clear reason to be fighting over it.

Landing... pad? No. Missile silo, fuel depo, supply dump: yes.

How much of a battlefield can you cover with this box?
Depends how how spaced out you are, but if you make a base with a contiguous perimeter like you see in the photos in this post, you're looking at 20"x26". That's pretty dense, though, and obviously has been set up for narrative logic rather than maximum coverage. It's definitely not a large battlefield in a box, but to be fair I wouldn't expect one at this price point.


What's the discount like?
It works out at about a 40% discount over buying the contents separately. I'd argue this is because the separate parts are wildly overpriced, but this discount does at least make it a tenable amount of terrain for what you're spending, particularly if you can get it at a discount (I bought from darksphere.co.uk).

In-game use: LOS blocking, and objectives
Most of these buildings will block LOS if, like me, you use the window shutters along one side of the building. I did this so that the walls facing the outside of my FOB would keep out stray bullets. The buildings won't block LOS for taller minis, but you can stack the hab atop the landing pad to get a 5" tall structure that will block almost everyone's LOS.


The radar dish and radio mast are there to be immersive objectives rather than terrain you interact with much. As a narrative player I'm 100% fine with that. Their footprints are about twice the size of a standard objective marker, and I give zero shits on that score.

The dish turns and angles freely.


TLDR review
In conclusion: yes.

The utilitarian aesthetic, the lack of skulls, the manageable levels of detail. Also the use of universal pipe connections so you can link it up to other bits of terrain. Can't wait to get some games on this stuff and/or defend it from marauding enemies of the Imperium.

Plans for expanding the base
I'd like more stockade walls to enlarge the perimeter, such that I could fit cargo containers and the like inside the base. Luckily, Jeff's planning to buy this kit for civilian stuff, and therefore doesn't want the walls. Ideal!


Comments

  1. Looks great! Your color scheme really slots into that "could be military, could be civilian" space that terrain of this sort needs to. If you got one of those newfangled marine bunkers, it would stand out nicely, but not too much as well. (much like your turrets are doing)

    The kid and I eyed this one for ourselves, but it is even more pricy over here, so no dice.

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    1. Sorry to here they've successfully priced themselves out of a sale for you. That's definitely my relationship with the zone mortalis terrain, which I'd love to have in plastic, and which is 100% not doable for me.

      I'm with you 100% on the marine bunkers - I intend to produce at least one, despite their rules being weird as hell!

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  2. Dear Charlie,

    Thanks for the tips! I recently got a good amount of terrain from discounted sources, and it is exceedingly nice to have pointers on how to generate this run-down, off-white as first presented in the "KillTeam: Octarius" barricades.
    Even better, wen get the luxury of a full-on Goonhammer tutorial later! You are quickly becoming somewhat of a trend-setter when it comes to down-to-earth, realistic methods in the fields of weathering, scenery painting and freehands (Goonhammer has really done a LOT of innovation in zero-nonsense, achievable painting techniques).

    I got similar spray primers on my end, but didn't have the chance to test them on scenery as you did. It gives much motivation to see that the results should be good, and help bring down execution times to something achievable :-)

    Something I really, really like about your method is that it is fast, and seems to create a really rich base for further Contrast paints work. So, in theory, you could do the ready-to-play colour scheme as you did, then increasingly work on adding colourful details later on, as long as you haven't added the varnish yet. Does it pan out like that?


    PS: For scenery discounts, I recommend cold-calling to any and all FLGS or GW store in your city, and ask them if anyone is looking to split the new "KillTeam" boxes (Nachmund, Octarius, etc). They will, invariably, tell you "yes", and re-sell you the parts you wish separately, without accomplices needed.
    The running price is 60-70€ for all the scenery in the box, and 40€ for one of the Killteams, as long as you don't take the rule books. The store manager will deliver it at the store, and you will always be able to check the goods in-person before pulling the trigger. It actually seems to be unofficial company policy....

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    1. Thank you! There's only a few gaming stores in my city, but mercifully my gaming group regularly want some or all of these boxes, so we arrange splits among ourselves. That's good advice all the same, so I'll bear it in mind for future!

      I actually don't varnish any of my miniatures at all (heresy I know) so it's not a consideration for me, but yeah - you could very much just procrastinate on the varnish and, if it's been long enough, I guess some tactical pre-varnish dusting would be in order :D

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  3. Dear Charlie,
    Seems like this wiki article about the Cobalt Scions having a liking for pre-made palissades and FOBs has paid off. Talk about DEEP LORE ;-p

    This is suitably roman, oozes verosimilitude and edges away from GW "Leroy Jenkins" marine charges. Much to like here about the chapter being a lived-in fighting force with a reasonable, functional approach to warfare.

    Do we have any conspicuous figurehead at the chapter responsible for this? (As, Lucullus misquoting "I love the smell of pre-fabbed encampments in the morning" as a very roman Beaver, or somesuch?)

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    1. LOL, holy shit that is the deepest of cuts! I'm always amazed and touched when anyone's actually read the stuff I've churned out for the Scions. I suspect it's one of those traditions where no-one knows who first thought of it, but it's nonetheless emerged out of the efficiency-obsessed cognitive soup of the chapter.

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